Skype Celebrates 10 Years

When I was a kid watching Back to the Future and Total Recall, the video-based calling was one of the most amazing and mind-blowing technologies. And then I was introduced to Skype and I knew I was living in the future.

Skype has a storied history including an acquisition by eBay in 2005, after which the original founders joined an investor group to buy back 70 percent of the company. In 2011, Skype was acquired by Microsoft, a marriage that seems to be working. Earlier this year Skype replaced Windows Live Messager and most recently integrated into the Outlook application in the cloud.

10 years after launching, Skype seems to be a rare cases of social media tools that actually figured out a sustainable business model. On August 20, 2013, Skype celebrated its anniversary by answering 10 frequently asked user questions. Most of the questions were fairly elementary such as how to find and add contacts, how to configure the audio settings and how the company makes its money.